Lots of news

See it really is GREEN, we don't have lawn that green at home in Melbourne. What you cannot see that as soon as you are out of this development is the sand, everywhere! Theres a whole lot of nothing out there until you add water.

inside our apartment looking out, we are on the second floor

looking back towards the kitchen, apartment here are almost always rented without appliances of any sort, so we have no cooker, no washing machine, no fridge. In fact we do not own a stick of furniture apart from a Christmas tree. We will hit ikea.

This is the view from our balcony. We are a short walk to a small mall and supermarket so I will not have to rely on taxis anymore.

Forgive me for not updating our blog as fully as we would have liked, its been a tumultuous couple of months.

Bert has changed jobs. He is now employed by a local company doing the same sort of work he was for the Australian company, only now he has support and organisational structure around him. It is a huge relief.

We have been living in the hotel apartments I mentioned earlier since arriving here and just yesterday we secured a place to live.

Berts office will be off the island of Abu Dhabi in a slum errr suburb called Mussaffa. It's a dust bowl that no one willingly lives in. It had always been our plan to live as close as possible to his workplace to try and minimise his work hours and stress load. I am not going to drive here in Abu Dhabi, the driving and congestion is a nightmare, and they put the steering wheels on the wrong side of the cars just to add to my confusion! So to live off the island means isolation for me, only very limited ways of getting into town.

So after a lot of searching, we made the decision to move to Dubai. This is a huge shift in thinking for us, for the past year we have read everything we could get our hands on regarding Abu Dhabi, now we are not going to live here. We have got a fabulous apartment on the very outskirts of Dubai for a third of what it would cost us anywhere in Abu Dhabi. Berts commute will be an hour of freeway driving instead of 40 minutes of heavy traffic. I hate the idea of adding two hours to his work day but it just made sense when we saw how lovely the area we are moving to is. http://www.greencommunity.ae/

Bobble heads

How funny are these? We got them at the gift shop in the Beach Rotana Hotel.

Virtual - The World

Virtual - The World

Great website with some fabulous photos from around Abu Dhabi

St Andrews Church gets funding from the Sheik.

Articles like this never make the media in western countries do they? The Emirates is a Muslim country yet they take tolerance of other faiths to a new level when they assist with the funding to the rebuilding of the Anglican church here in Abu Dhabi.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091113/NATIONAL/711129868/1040

ABU DHABI // The Crown Prince has pledged to help fund the refurbishment of the capital’s St Andrew’s Church compound, a group of ageing buildings that draws tens of thousands of worshippers every week.The announcement that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, who is also Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, will “take care of any shortfall of funds” in the project to revamp the complex into a modern place of worship was made by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, at a Remembrance Sunday service this week.

Young Emiratis

We were at the local ADNOC petrol station the other night and I was watching a group of young boys in Burger King. They looked to be about 13 or 14, and were all dressed almost identically. Like these boys in this picture. Long white dishdash, red and white headgear. However, like all young teenage boys everywhere in the world they were tossing fries at each other and slouching in their seats. I wonder how teenagers here rebel, if they cannot wear outragous clothes that shock their parents, or a strange hairstyle that scare their grandmothers.

New car

We got a new car today, its fabulous. A Crysler 300c. Its white with a white leather interior, very swish indeed. Now if we could just find a carpark big enough to hold it.